Subject: Climate on Our Minds

September 16, 2026

A few years ago, during an ADFF Q&A with designer Bruce Mau, he made a memorable observation, "We have designed our way into this (climate)problem and we are going to have to design our way out of it."


Next week, is Climate Week in New York. There are many important events happening across the city, and ADFF joins the conversation with a special screening of The Space Architect presented by Grohe at the LIXIL Water Experience Center, 155 Fifth Avenue.


The Space Architect introduces us to the trailblazing architect Constance Adams, whose groundbreaking work with NASA reimagined how humans might live in outer space. The film captures Adams reflecting on her extraordinary career and her final, passionate focus on Earth, where she hoped to apply what she had learned about designing for the extreme conditions of space to the urgent challenges of the climate crisis. Following the screening, director Rebecca Carpenter will join ADFF Festival Director Kyle Bergman to talk about the film, Constance Adams’ legacy and the Mothership project.

Some film highlights from this year’s slate focusing on the environment include Barbara Buser – Swiss Pioneer of Sustainability and a selection of short films presented as part of Young Climate Stories program.

 
 

There is a question embedded in this film that architecture rarely asks plainly: what if the most responsible thing we can do is not build at all?


Barbara Buser has spent her career doing exactly that, rescuing buildings from demolition, rebuilding them with reclaimed materials and turning former industrial sites into spaces where communities actually want to live. 


Her practice runs on a set of convictions that once made her an outlier and now make her a pioneer: circular economy over waste, care over replacement, responsibility over profit.

We selected this film because it reframes sustainability not as a technical problem but as an ethical one. To save a building is to believe it still has value. That instinct to mend rather than discard, to work with what exists rather than start over, feels urgent in a discipline that has long measured progress by what is new


For more information about Barbara Buser – Swiss Pioneer of Sustainability, including ADFF:NY screening times and tickets, click here.

Young Climate Stories | 3 Short Films + Conversation 

Co-presented by The World Around


How To Plant A Lake | 2026 | 14 Min

A Garden in the Desert | 2025 |14 Min

Wasted Treasures | 2026 | 8 Min


A conversation with The World Around’s Executive Director Beatrice Galilee and the Young Climate Prize community

 

If you’ve been looking for reasons to feel hopeful, this is a good place to start.


Young Climate Stories is a documentary series produced by The World Around that follows participants in its Young Climate Prize, a mentorship program for climate innovators under 25 from across the globe.


ADFF is screening three films from the series this season, and together they make a quietly powerful case that some of the most consequential climate work happening right now is being led by young people with limited resources, deep roots in their communities, and an intimate understanding of what is at stake.


These films are not stories about waiting for systems to change. They are stories about people who didn’t wait.

Following the films, The World Around’s Executive Director Beatrice Galilee will be in conversation with participants from the Young Climate Prize, discussing their work, their ideas, and how the next generation is developing real responses to the climate crisis.


This program is free. When reserving your ticket, you will have the opportunity to make a donation. All proceeds will go directly to support the Young Climate Prize. Come see the films, meet some of the people behind this work and leave with a little more hope about what is possible.


For more information screening times and tickets, click here.


Architecture & Design Film Festival, 200 E 10th Street # 1018, New York, NY 10003, United States

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